Diagnostic and prognostic roles of serum interleukin-6 in patients with uveitis
Reviewed by Kelvin Cheng

This is a retrospective observational case series investigating the diagnostic and prognostic role of serum interleukin (IL)-6 in patients with uveitis involving 80 patients – 60 patients (75%) with normal IL-6 levels and 20 patients (25%) with high IL-6 levels. Between the groups, patients with high IL-6 had significantly higher age, were more likely to have systemic diseases and have a higher number of flare-ups (P=0.015, 0.000, 0.03 respectively). Multivariate analysis on variables found to be significant on univariate analysis showed that systemic disease (OR = 10.83, p<0.001), number of flare-ups (OR=2.9, P=0.02) and age (OR = 0.95, P=0.03) were significantly associated with systemic IL-6 levels in both groups. The authors suggest that high IL-6 and uveitis may be the first manifestation of systemic rheumatological diseases and therefore may require further investigation and rheumatological referral. The authors acknowledge the retrospective nature of this study with a limited sample size and hence recommends a prospective study with a greater sample size to validate study results.

Diagnostic and prognostic roles of serum interleukin-6 levels in patients with uveitis.
Maleki A, Gomez S, Asgari S, et al.
OCULAR IMMUNOLOGY AND INFLAMMATION
2022;30(2):457-62.